Slower NBN no good for research: minister

AUSTRALIAN medical and health researchers would be held back in their ability to work with overseas counterparts under the coalition's broadband plan, Health Minister Tanya Plibersek says.

The minister said collaboration was the key to scientific breakthroughs, and hospitals, universities and health and medical research institutes around the world were already working together in real time.

"That can't happen without good-quality internet," she told reporters in Adelaide on Wednesday.

"It's not just the emails that are going back and forth, it's face-to-face meetings and importantly it's also the high-volume data that's being transferred.

"You can't send that sort of information on copper wire and an ordinary modem."

The coalition's $29.5 billion plan for the national broadband network involves taking high-speed fibre to the node, a cabinet on a street corner, with the existing copper network completing the connection to individual homes or businesses.

It would offer slower speeds that Labor's current $44.1 billion plan to taking fibre to all premises.

Ms Plibersek said the coalition's proposal ignored the rate of change in information technology.

"Why would we build something that just gets us through today, when what we want is something that leads Australia into the future?" she asked.